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evening great buzzards, eagles and other birds of prey. I watched them turning, always in the same place. I carefully observed their movements, noting the places above which they turned, and studied the thermals which they used and which seemed very powerful. I was envious.

A year earlier I was in Upper Silesia, in a German camp at Grunau in the Riesengebirge. Excellent instructors gave me all the tricks of the trade I needed to allow me to climb to 4,900 metres.

Every day conditions got ever better than the best days in Grunau. But... I had no glider and there was no chance of getting one sent by plane from the United States. Moreover, the Chinese were not letting me fly with the war raging. One fine morning, it was April 20, my Chinese secretary translated for me a newspaper article announcing a forthcoming gliding demonstration by a Chinese pilot trained in Germany.

Two days later, a group of military pilots arrived in Chungking with two fine new planes of the "Rhônsperber" type. They were two high-performance gliders equipped with the best instruments; how had they got to Chungking, after the retreat from Shanghai and then to Hangkow (2,000 km away, with no railway link) will always remain a mystery to me. But there they were, before my eyes!

On the 24th, a Chinese pilot was towed to 2,000 metres and produced a wonderful demonstration of acrobatics. Unfortunately, for reasons that were unclear, while he was still at about 100 metres, the machine went into a dive and crashed to the ground. Nothing was left of it.

Some hours after the tragic accident, I took a telephone call from the Minister of War, asking if I would be willing to undertake a demonstration in the remaining glider. I accepted immediately without hesitation and fixed a rendezvous for the next day at 8:00 am. On April 25, 1940, I therefore found myself examining in detail the Rhônsperber, which had been placed at my disposal, as well as the Curtiss plane that was to tow me. I installed my altimeter and a special artificial horizon2 which I had brought from Europe in my baggage.

The glider was ready for take-off at 11:40. I gave instructions to
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5. Louis de San in Grunau, Silesia, in 1938, where he learned to fly a glider

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'Half dizzy, I feel myself pass under the big ship, caught in the swirl of its screw, and finally I emerge, carried by the terrible current. I have never felt such intense fear. I felt I was close to death.

*

Louis clung to an oar and then spotted the sampan some 20 metres away where all but one of his companions were aboard. The remaining man had reached the shore. He notes quaintly that he lost a treasured pen. 'I lost my Parker but kept my life after being but a thread away from losing it,' he wrote.

Japanese bombing continued and Louis concluded he had a 50 per cent chance of surviving. ‘Should there be a lightning advance by the Japanese, the worst is to be expected. This will end, no doubt, in a massacre of the Europeans, of the population.*

In his previous post, his first outside Belgium, Louis had been in Berlin, where he had met some of the Nazi leaders later to become notorious. His son Marc says he was impressed by the Nazi regime, though later changed his view.

While in Germany, Louis trained as a glider pilot at Grunau in Silesia, probably in machines launched by an elastic bungee, rather than being towed aloft. Grunau was then part of Germany and easily reached from Louis's post in Berlin and it was perhaps the greatest centre for gliding in Europe. Thousands of the machines were made there, notably in the Schneider factory, and production was supported by the German government. Today Grunau is called Jezów Sudecki and is in Poland.

When his next posting came he had no expectation that he would be able to maintain his interest in the sport in wartime China.

He describes how his secretary one day in 1940 drew his attention to an item in a newspaper saying the Chinese military had acquired two Rhônsperber gliders and were to give a public demonstration. The military pilot who flew the first went into a dive from 100 metres for unexplained reasons and was killed.

It seems that Louis did not hesitate when the authorities asked him if he would fly the remaining machine the next day. He says the
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